Monthly Archives: November 2009

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I just saw an article on CNN about Tiger Woods. Apparently Tiger Woods got into a car crash this weekend in his neighborhood. Fortunately nobody was hurt and nobody else was involved. The only damage done in this accident is to Tiger Wood’s car and apparently a fire hydrant that was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Tiger Woods gave his insurance information and license to the police, and then went back to his home and hasn’t talked to the police since.

None of this should have made it past the fifth link in the sports section, but of course, Cartoon Network News thinks this is a front page issue! And they’re actively trying to make it an issue by talking to themselves. Check out this quote from the CNN article…

“CNN: Can the police do anything about it if Woods continues to refuse to talk to them?

Toobin (Cartoon Network News’ current “senior legal analyst”): The police don’t have a lot of options. If someone doesn’t want to talk to you, you as a police officer can’t do anything about it.”

Hey CNN. You need to quit talking to yourselves. Because this is exactly how it’s supposed to work! The 5th amendment. The idea someone is “innocent until proven guilty”. Moving some things through a civil court as opposed to a criminal court. Crazy country, huh?

If Tiger Woods wants to drive into his car into his swimming pool so he can learn how to scuba dive in a Lexus, he can do that. If Tiger Woods wants to roast some marshmallows on his property with a brand new BMW that’s on fire, he can do that. If he has a lawnmower that needs a 12 gauge buckshot overhaul, he can do that too. As long as no one is hurt or under threat of becoming hurt and some other person’s private property is not damaged or under threat of becoming damaged, the police don’t need to get involved.

Since this happened in a public location, though, the police had to get involved. Fortunately since no one else was hurt and no one’s personal property was damaged, the police only needed to make a traffic report. Tiger Woods submitted what he was required to under the state law for this traffic report, so that should have been the end of it. The police can now hand this over to the city and any interested insurance companies since this is no longer a criminal matter in any way. Done. End of story.

The police have thousands of better things to do than follow up on this non-criminal issue, and I hope the police chief in the area has the stones to tell the media just that. CNN is inflaming non-issues to give facetime to idiots.

“CNN: A story in last week’s National Enquirer alleged that Woods has been seeing a New York night club hostess. The woman has denied any affair with Woods to The Associated Press. She’s also apparently retained attorney Gloria Allred.”

Hey CNN. Quit that. The National Enquirer and the Globe are far better at this kind of “journalism” than you are.

So there I was at a restaurant this weekend with my wife and in-laws when I came across this little item on the menu…

Small stone menu item

The photo is poor quality because it came from my iPhone, but there is a double asterisk by the item TRIPITAS and a definition underneath saying “please note that TRIPITAS in rare occasions may contain small stones.”

“Ah [just] cockpit distraction, that’s all I can say,” is the [pilot’s] response.

Wow. 144 passengers onboard, and an hour and a half with zero ground contact, speeding along at Mach 0.78 35,000 feet over and 150 miles past the Minnesota airport and “we were distracted” was the best they could come up with? And they want their licenses back??

Minnesota ATC did have the pilots confirm through directed maneuvers that they were actually in control of the plane and did allow them to come back and land at the airport without escort though. Personally, I would have made them wait in a holding pattern until they were properly flanked and escorted down by the military on a secure runway and had everyone sifted on a restricted tarmac.

I’m taking an extended Thanksgiving vacation until Monday! Between the self-induced turkey-comas and ODing on fresh pecan pie, enjoying spending time with my wife, and actually having time to unpack, I’ll be plenty busy for the next few days.

Until then, I have this to submit…

Happy Cow

I saw this in the parking lot of Sams recently. That cow is pretty happy for being where he is!

Another major class one recall has been issued by the FDA. This one involves a “computer aided surgery platform that surgeons can use to perform Hip, Knee, Spine, Neuro and ENT surgical procedures.”

Designed by Stryker Corporation, the company announced today that it is initiating… “a worldwide, Class 1 recall of 23 Operating Room System II Surgical Navigation Systems because there is a potential for the navigation PC SPC-1 component to stop working which could result in the screen freezing, the system updating at a slow rate, or not responding at all.”

The items being recalled are…

* Navigation System II-Cart with Stryker Catalog Number 7700-100-000 and Serial #s 100715-100735

Normally, if a computer locks up on you, you’ve usually lost whatever you were working on. But when a computer is an integral part of a surgical procedure, you really don’t want to lose the last thing you were working on. According to the press release, “the potential harms associated with this failure are: delay in surgery, reschedule of the procedure resulting in an additional surgery, risk of infection, increased morbidity, potential neurological deficits, or injury due to the surgeon operating in an area where they did not intend to operate. Depending on the type of surgery, these failures could potentially lead to serious adverse health consequences, including death.”

So a five minute reboot during something like a posterior lumbar interbody fusion would be really, really bad.

But this is a release that is mostly for those customers Stryker that has not been able to reach. According to the press release, Stryker already told everyone who had one of these items that a repair is on the way and… “as of October 30, 2009 all domestic units have been repaired.”

But if you do have a Stryker unit, you should check to be sure that it doesn’t fall into the recall category and/or has already been repaired. If not, you can call Stryker Instruments at 1-800-253-3210.

You know, anyone who willfully jumps into a BEAR PIT has pretty much told the world they’re ready to check out. Seriously.

At the Berne Bear Park in Switzerland this weekend, police were called by park officials when they saw a man had been sitting on the edge of a bear pit for ten minutes. But just as the police arrived, the man jumped into the pit.

So after this idiot jumped in, the bear did what bears do when someone suddenly enters their living area unannounced. He pulled out a folding table and set a pot of tea on the burner and looked for some fresh biscuits. Oh wait, no he didn’t do that… he mauled him.

As the bear was illustrating the “my, what big teeth you have” part of the story, the police moved into the enclosure, eventually shooting the bear once in the chest. The bear spit out the idiot-sized chew toy, and the wall jumper got another chance at life.

In the article on the DailyMail website, it says this fellow was “mentally handicapped” and was “treated in hospital for severe head and leg injuries, and his condition yesterday was said to be comfortable”. So my question is what was a “mentally handicapped” man doing unsupervised at a bear park sitting on the edge of a 20 foot tall wall looking into a bear pit all by himself? For 10 whole minutes? And only jumping as the police were arriving?

This whole incident wasn’t the bear’s doing. The bear was in his home, minding his business, being a bear, and got shot for someone else’s stupidity. And I’m not completely blaming the “mentally handicapped” man on this one.

And as for the poor bear? The “vets… decided not to operate to remove the bullet splinters, treating him with antibiotics”

Great. Now this poor bear has 9mm fragments constantly moving around in his chest. Even for a big brown bear that’s got to suck.

Poor bear

Fortunately “Police and zoo officials say there has been an outpouring of public sympathy – for the bear. Bouquets of flowers and pots of honey have been placed outside his enclosure.”

If you have a child that sleeps in a crib, you need to check and see who made that crib as soon as possible.

After four child deaths and 15 entrapments, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) “…announced the voluntary recall of more than 2.1 million Stork Craft drop-side cribs, including about 147,000 Stork Craft drop-side cribs with the Fisher-Price logo. The recall involves approximately 1,213,000 units distributed in the United States and 968,000 units distributed in Canada.”

Pretty much every Stork Craft crib with a manufacturing date between January 1993 and October 2009 and Stork Craft cribs with the Fisher-Price logo with manufacturing dates between October 1997 and December 2004 are subject to this recall. This recall only involves Stork Craft cribs with a “plastic trigger and one-hand-system drop-side hardware” and not those with “metal rod drop-side hardware”. Any Stork Craft crib that does NOT have a drop down side are not affected by this recall.

You can find the “manufacture date, model number, crib name, country of origin, and the firm’s name, address, and contact information… on the assembly instruction sheet attached to the mattress support board. The firm’s insignia “storkcraft baby” or “storkling” is inscribed on the drop-side teething rail of some cribs. In Stork Craft cribs that contain the “Fisher-Price” logo, this logo can be found on the crib’s teething rail, in the manufacturer’s instructions, on the assembly instruction sheet attached to the mattress support board, and on the end panels of the Twinkle-Twinkle and Crystal crib models.”

If you have one of these cribs, the CPSC urges you to immediately stop using the crib, wait for a free repair kit (that you need to go online and ask for), and do not attempt to use or fix the crib before you get the kit.

Now this is a much more specific and targeted recall. Today Unilever announced that they are recalling “certain Shedd’s Country Crock chilled side-dish products because they may contain undeclared sulfites.”

“Shedd’s Country Crock® Side Dishes DELUXE Four Cheese Pasta, withBest By dates of DEC 05 09 through to JAN 16 10. The UPC code is 027400230875. The product comes in a 20-ounce (1 LB 4 OZ / 567 g) plastic tub inside a paperboard sleeve. The UPC code is located on the bottom of the sleeve and the Best-By date is located on the same side of the sleeve and the side of the tub.”